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Thinking the Future. Death and Redemption. Heidegger and Rosenzweig

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Thinking the Future. Death and Redemption. Heidegger and Rosenzweig $AI´MWN. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, Suplemento 3, 2010, 249-256 ISSN: 1130-0507 Thinking the Future. Death and Redemption. Heidegger and Rosenzweig BENIAMINO FORTIS* Abstract: Embedded within the leading issue of Resumen: Enmarcado dentro del tema principal the thinking of the future, Heideggerian Death del pensamiento del futuro, la muerte heidegge- and Rosenzweigian Redemption represent two riana y la redención de Rosenzweig presentan dos different reference-points which can shed light on formas diferentes de apuntar a aspectos que pue- human existence. den arrojar luz sobre la existencia humana. More precisely, the way the future is conceived Más en concreto, el modo en que Heidegger y by Heidegger and Rosenzweig lies at the roots of Rosenzweig conciben el futuro se encuentra en such relevant issues as mortality, otherness and las raíces de cuestiones tales como la mortalidad, possibility. la otredad y la posibilidad. Key words: Heidegger, Rosenzweig, Death, Palabras claves: Heidegger, Rosenzweig, muerte, Redemption. redención This article compares and analyzes the parallels and disjunctures between the concep- tions of the future that emerge from Heidegger’s and Rosenzweig’s thinking about time. The reference works to this aim are Being and Time1 and The Star of Redemption2. The way the future is conceived develops through complex interactions among such themes as mortality, otherness and possibility which are all strictly affected by the way the temporal issue is thought. The sharp alternative between a vision of death as last possibility (letzte Möglichkeit), in Heidegger, and as first factuality (erste, elementare Tatsächlichkeit), in Rosenzweig, represents the first main attainment whose intrinsic meaning reflects the deep difference between the perspectives of the two philosophers (§ 1). The Heideggerian Dasein considers death an extreme possibility just because it is the cessation of every other possibility. Mortality, showing the fade out of every Potentiality-for- being, exercises a retroactive effect on existence which brings such aspects as finitude and transitoriness to the fore. But existence seen from Rosenzweig’s point of view can however acquire the same features by mean of contact with the sphere of otherness (§ 2). The profound affinity Heidegger recognizes between the dimensions of future and possibility confirms a subordination of the one of otherness. To connect directly the future to the otherness of redemption – like Rosenzweig does – implies instead the downsizing – but not the annulment – of the range of possibility. University of Florence. E-mail: ben.fortis@gmail. 1 M. Heidegger: Being and Time, New York, Harper & Row, 1962. 2 F. Rosenzweig: The Star of Redemption, Medison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. 250 Beniamino Fortis These are two existential positions whose radical contrast can in no case come to an agreement through a conciliatory compromise. Only the opposition dynamics of an aut-aut based way of thinking can render an account of it (§ 3). 1. Last possibility or first factuality? Every form of temporal existence is deeply affected by an impending destiny of mortality. Both Heideggerian Dasein and Rosenzweigian Judesein regard the end of life as the main focus of existence, but the difference between them consists in the way they relate to death. They represent two opposite attitudes to face human being in time. a. In Being and Time the problem of death is tackled on the base of the difference Heidegger remarks between the existentiell-ontical dimension and the existentiale-ontological one. The main trait of existence consists, for Heidegger, in the fact that in each case Dasein is already ahead of itself, i.e. in the fact that «in Dasein there is always something still outstanding, which, as a potentiality-for-being for Dasein itself, has not yet become “actual”»3. But a conception of death as the mere end of existence, from which Dasein is kept away by a lack of being, would confer on the reaching of death the meaning of filling of a lack and this would imply the loss of Dasein’s innermost essential feature: Dasein’s «Being is annihilated when what is still outstanding in its Being has been liquidated»4. The reaching of death as fulfilment of existence would deprive it of its fundamental incompleteness. The completion of existence would also be its dissolution. The fundamental flaw in this conception of death consists in considering Dasein «something present-at-hand, ahead of which something that is not yet present-at-hand is costantly shoving itself»5, in other words, in assuming a merely ontical point of view. But a radical change in perspective can show that «death is not something not yet pesent-at-hand, […]. Death is something that stands before us – something impending»6. The extreme dimension of death does not represent a simple not yet present aiming at a definitive presence. From an existentiale-ontological point of view, what develops between Dasein and death is rather a combination of mutual relationships characterized by fluidity and possibility more than by rigidity and actuality. Dasein, as potentiality-for-being, is moulded on the ontological manner of being-ahead- of-itself, it is motivated by a tendency toward what it not yet is – on one hand. But – on the other hand – the focus of Dasein’s striving is also something that it already is in the particular way of having something to reach, of being leaning toward something – an existential inclination that originates in the ontological manner of being of a tensional should be. What Dasein encounters in its facing forward is death seen as the possibility of extinguishment of every other possibility, but it is exactly at this level that Heideggerian argument reverses and, from the field of mortality, turns back to the one of existence. 3 M. Heidegger: Being and Time, op. cit., p. 279. 4 Ibid., p. 280. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 293-294. Daímon. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, Suplemento 3, 2010 Thinking the Future. Death and Redemption. Heidegger and Rosenzweig 251 Showing the end of every possibility, death exercises a retroactive influence on existence, by virtue of which possibility strengthens its existential-ontological meaning and turns out to be confirmed in the role of main characteristic feature of existing in time. The intrinsic leaning forward of potentiality-for-being turns to the extreme of death7. Death, as a limit, sheds new light on the dimension of possibility, bringing to the fore its importance for existence8. This reciprocity is the background on which death and possibility relate to each other and mutually define their ontological status. Heideggerian conception of death gains in this way a connotation in terms of last possibility, the extreme level of the openness of existence. It is now worth pointing out that such an idea of death rides out the ontical impasse considered before. The risk of an ontical degradation is avoided by mantaining the ontological tenor of mortality at a state of possibility and preventing it from changing into a condition of actuality: «Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be “actualized”, nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be»9. b. Also The Star of Redemption opens with the need to come to terms with the problem of death. Every form of philosophical knowledge is conceived by Rosenzweig as an attempt to escape from death and to elude the atavistic fear by which death is accompanied. But though philosophy rises up against the originary dread of death, every claim of rebellion against human condition is inexorably fated to fall. «From death, it is from the fear of death that all cognition of the All begins. Philosophy has the audacity to cast off the fear of the earthly, to remove from death its poisonous sting, from Hades his pestilential breath»10. Philosophy claims to be able to face up to death, but in fact it is not. Death, as a triggering motive to make philosophical thought react against human destiny, keeps implicitly affecting existence, thus frustrating every effort to assuage the fear of the poisonous sting and of the pestilential breath. In the course of its history, philosophy has adopted many different strategies to pursue the goal of a definitive abolition of death (Abschaffung des Todes). But every attempt, only apparently succeeding in achieving its purpose, turns in fact out to be a failure and thus, a further argument in support of a need for taking seriously into account the presupposition (Voraussetzung) of mortality. This is a fondamental issue that cannot be got around by philosphical abstractions and that rather emerges as the most pressing, concrete and inescapable one for human existence. 7 «Thus death reveals itself as that possibility which is one’s ownmost, which is non-relational, and which is not to be outstripped. As such, death is something distinctively impending. Its existential possibility is based on the fact that Dasein is essentially disclosed to itself, and disclosed, indeed, as ahead-of-itself» (Ibid., p. 294). 8 «With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. This is a possibility in which the issue is nothing less that Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Its death is the possibility of no-longer-being-able-to-be- there. If Dasein stands before itself as this possibility, it has been fully assigned to its ownmost potentiality-for- Being» (Ibid.). 9 Ibid., p. 307. 10 F. Rosenzweig: The Star of Redemption, op. cit., p. 9. Daímon. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, Suplemento 3, 2010 252 Beniamino Fortis On the one hand, metaphysical-transcendent philosophies cope with the fear of death by way of division: Body and soul, the empirical and the intelligible, are the two dimensions into which the world is divided, according to such a way of thinking. Death concerns only the first one, while the second one is immortal and eternal.
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